A Story Without a Moral

Charles David Hughes walked along the edge of the empty road. He looked down and knew that Robert, his shift supervisor, would surely comment on the dust, no dirt, on his black shoes. He took off his uniform cap to wipe the sweat off his face and thought that the dog, captured in mid-stride on the front, also had a light coating of dust.

Robert would probably have a word about that, too. "Greyhound", he would say. "wants its drivers to look and be professional and dirty shoes and cap wasn't the right image."

All at once, another thought struck Charles David Hughes: Where the hell did he put the damn bus? This was going to be the third bus Charlie (as nearly everyone called him, unless they were angry, when it was "Charles" or "Hughes" or, sometimes, an obscenity) had lost in the past couple of weeks. Not exactly "lost", he thought, maybe "misplaced" would be a better term.

He looked back the way he had come; there was no sign of a bus and one wouldn't think a huge Greyhound bus, with two toilets and reclining seats, could escape notice. He didn't think he had any passengers aboard the bus when it went missing, although to be accurate, the bus didn't really "go missing". After all, a big Greyhound bus with two toilets, and so forth, had to be somewhere.

Charlie kept trudging along the road. He thought about the other two buses that had been misplaced. Yes, that was much better. Where were they? Maybe all three buses had found each other, as it were; they were, perhaps, parked in a circle having a real bus-laugh about Charlie. He really didn't think this probable, but on the other hand, Charlie could not think of anything else.

Robert had been seriously bothered about the first two busses. He was always complaining about the forms he had to fill out whenever there was an accident or damage to one of the monsters. Having to complete a form trying to explain how a driver had misplaced a bus (with two rest rooms and reclining seats) stretched his creativity. Yes, Charlie thought to himself, Robert would surely be annoyed.

Maybe it was time to find new employment, one that allowed one to stay in an office and maybe lose (misplace?) a stapler or something. Certainly not something like a bus.

As he continued to walk along the road, Charlie pondered all of this, all while trying to remember where he had left the darn bus.